The Blueprint Plan Company’s home design principles
“The end is to build well. Well building hath three conditions: firmness, commodity, and delight.” Wootten 1624, after Vitruvius 25BC.
Imagine a welcoming, spacious, light-filled home, where you can entertain formally, which is also a casual comfortable family-friendly place, where you can have a big group of workmates or friends over for a barbecue, and yet it’s still the right size when there are just two of you.
Imagine a home that’s warm in winter, yet cool in summer - without spending a fortune on heating or air conditioning.
Imagine a home that copes as your family expands, but it’s still a good fit when they fly the nest and there are just two of you again. And of course it’s not long until they’re back visiting, this time with partners and next time with grandchildren …
Imagine a home where rooms are designed in three dimensions, with higher or sloping ceilings, where spaces can be opened up when you want a big area, and closed off when you need separation, where space can flow out onto the terrace or into the garden on fine days but where you can cosy up and shut out the cold, wet weather in winter.
Imagine a home that is more flexible, more fun, more affordable, more comfortable to live in and more economical to run than any house you have ever lived in.
That’s the philosophy that fires our designs. We are passionate about beautiful, affordable architecture that’s a pleasure to live in, and here is how we do it.
How green (and smart) are we?
Mainstream architects have been incorporating many of today’s fashionably “green” concepts into home designs for a long time. Many of them are simply sensible house design concepts, which make your home a great, versatile place to live, and economical to run.
Our house plans are environmentally designed to make the most of nature, and take advantage of today’s technology in terms of design, materials and fittings. In particular, we pay attention to the following aspects to ensure our house plans give you a new home that will be just right for you:
Planning objectives for the design of your home
Our Not So Big house designs
Passive solar heating and cooling considerations in our house designs
Health and safety considerations in our house designs
Glazing considerations in our house designs
Insulation considerations in our house designs
Building materials considered in our house designs
Water supply and disposal recommendations for our house designs
Electrical recommendations for our house designs
Planning objectives for the design of your home
- Clear distinction between public and private outdoor spaces on the floor plan
- Clear definition of the front door and entry, while restricting access to private areas
- Location of living rooms and bedrooms on the north side, and opening out via verandas, decks and terraces to the garden
- Bedrooms can also face east or west, but we avoid them facing south
- Service rooms are best on the south side and grouped for plumbing efficiency
- Minimisation of circulation space
- Consideration of the height of rooms and spaces, and whether ceilings are horizontal or sloping, to maximise the feeling of volume and enjoyment
- Keeping the home design simple to keep construction costs affordable
Our Not So Big house designs
Not So Big is the name of a movement in the US which is a revolt against McMansions (overblown, oversize houses designed to impress from the street).
Not So Big houses are sized “just right”, like Goldilocks’ favourite bed (not too big, not too small), and puts quality of interior spaces, relationships between spaces and indoor-outdoor flow well ahead of sheer quantity of floor area on the floor plan.
We have noted some of our designs that particularly illustrate this principle, but really all our houses are designed with quality ahead of quantity.
Passive solar heating and cooling considerations in our house designs
If you’ve got a great, big, warm sun out there, we figure why not use it to bring light and warmth into a home - but keep the rays at bay when they are not needed? Our home designs make every effort to:
- Use free energy from the sun
- Face living spaces and bedrooms to the north and open to decks or terraces
- Design concrete slab floors as heat stores, to absorb the sun’s warmth during the day and release it in the evening and at night
- Design eaves widths to shield the interior in summer, while allowing maximum heat gain in winter
- Take into account that this process naturally reverses in summer - the slab cools at night and only slowly warms during the day, keeping the interior cool even on the hottest day
Health and safety considerations in our house designs
- Cross-ventilate living spaces to keep air fresh and reduce condensation
- Specify extract fans in bathrooms and kitchen to remove odours and moisture
- Specify towel warmers which, apart from drying and warming towels, warm the whole room and reduce humidity and condensation (best if on a timer)
- Specify hard-wired smoke detectors, not battery-operated ones
- Provide recycling facilities for sorting household recyclables and composting kitchen waste
- Provide separate laundry, with space for cleaning gear and access to outdoor clothes drying
Glazing considerations in our house designs
- Minimise glazing areas on the east, south and west sides to reduce heat loss
- Expand glazing areas on the north wall to capitalise solar gain, particularly in the colder times of the year
- Double-glaze exterior doors and windows to achieve R0.31 rating. In addition, split frame joinery is specified to eliminate cold bridging
- Specify safety glass where Code requires
Insulation considerations in our house designs
- Provide maximum eco-friendly insulation in the roof, exterior walls and under the slab, all to exceed current Code requirements
Building materials considered in our house designs
- We specify sustainably grown timbers for framing and finishing
- We encourage and celebrate re-use of salvaged timber for both house and landscaping
- We specify low toxicity, low VOC paints, coatings and finishes
Water supply and disposal recommendations for our house designs
In order to take advantage of our home designs’ environmentally-friendly approach, we encourage you to:
- Source water from supplies which are independent of the town supply: rainwater, river water or ground-bore, with filtering and sterilisation
- Collect roof water for irrigation and use grey water systems even if connected to the town supply
- Use powered sewerage systems with irrigation, grey-water recycling systems, and reed pond safe dispersal to watercourses
Electrical recommendations for our house designs
In order to take advantage of our home designs’ environmentally-friendly approach, we encourage you to:
- Future-proof your home with smart star data cabling
- Use smart light switching - turn on only the lights you need
- Save energy with control devices - use movement sensors, timers and thermostats
- Use energy-saver halogen and LED lights
- Use compact fluorescent lamps sparingly - they are more economical, but the quality of light is not as good, and there are question marks about end of life disposal
- Use task lighting where you need to see what you’re doing - over food preparation areas, around the bathroom mirror, and for reading
- Avoid using downlights in sloping roof ceilings - they leak heat when off, and can cause excessive heat build-up in the roof when on
- Create ambience with uplights and wall lighting using dimmers
- Use soft lighting outdoors - you can create better ambience and use less lighting by just highlighting a few key features
Many of these home design ideas are now fashionably known as “green” - turning your back to the cold wind, opening the living rooms to the sun, using terraces and floor slabs to absorb the sun’s heat, using pergolas and eaves to control the sun - but they are principles that mainstream architects have been using in house designs for decades in New Zealand.
There is also a new and welcome awareness that these ideas are sensible and practical for our environment and climate, and this is spilling over into the manufacture of building materials, with emphasis now on such aspects as sustainable management of resources, low energy in production processes, recycling of energy and materials, safer solvents, etc.
This can only be good news for the future health and well-being of New Zealand and New Zealanders.
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